Killing Time in Cairo

Rough paraphrase from memory - "There is nothing good or bad that thinking does not make it so" - Hamlet.

One of the advantages of my situation is that it dramatically reduced the stress of making sight-seeing decisions. For example, the quandry over whether or not I want to take a taxi to see the Citadel or the Mohamed Ali Palace is replaced by the much simpler decision of what size bottled water to buy for brushing my teeth (grin). Still, I'm not going to be defeated so I took the opportunity to take very long walks to see what I could reach, which is really a better way to get a feel of a place anyway. Of course, doing it on foot in Cairo in July meant essentially spending a lot of time chasing shade because the head was dreadful. I gained a pretty good sense of Zamalek, which is the suburb where the Hotel Longchamps is located. Zamalek is an island so the Nile flows on both sides of it - and I don't know how many times I crossed over it on various bridges (which was both beautiful because of the view and short-lived because the glaring sun made stopping to enjoy the scenery from the bridge a tad wilting). I was also able to make it into central Cairo and was astonished how easily I was able to reach the Egyptian Museum again (and I think back with a little chagrin at the day that I was "trapped" in downtown Cairo and couldn't get home - if I had had a better sense of Cairo's geography I could have walked home. The Nile was much more beautiful than I guess I thought it would be. It flows peacefully through downtown Cairo and doesn't seem to notice the chaos around it.